Don’t Compromise, Meet Technical and Business Priorities

Leading-edge organizations choose Open Compute Project (OCP)-based infrastructure so they can scale out cost-effectively. There is a strong argument for using OCP-based hardware in a data center; it is less expensive to buy and to maintain, reduces points of failure, is designed for more efficient power management, and significantly reduces security issues.

But, for teams trying to perform complex high-performance computing (HPC) or artificial intelligence (AI), OCP has always been a challenge. Until now, OCP has been largely focused on hyper-scale cloud solution providers. Few vendors have the skills and experience to build server or rack designs that meet the complex, software-driven needs of HPC and AI.

Fortunately, Platinum OCP member Penguin Computing—recognized for our OCP expertise as the HPC lead on the OCP Incubation Committee—has the solution, the Penguin Computing® Tundra® Extreme Scale platform. The Tundra system combines the capital expenses (CAPEX) and operating expense (OPEX) savings of OCP-based hardware with today’s technologies for HPC and AI.

Tundra ES for HPC

Thanks to two decades of experience in how software is orchestrated, deployed, managed, and optimized for different compute architectures, Penguin Computing was able to create a complete HPC system that is dense enough for the most challenging projects and flexible enough for virtually any HPC computing architecture—while also taking advantage of OCP’s inherent ease of maintenance and low total cost of ownership (TCO).

Tundra ES for AI

To meet the increasing demand for AI training and inference, the Penguin Computing AI Practice has created a reference design for the Tundra ES platform that supports the latest developments in AI while taking advantage of OCP’s low TCO and allows massive scale up.

This production-quality design was informed by real life experience working with some of the largest AI clusters in the world about how AI frameworks are orchestrated, deployed and optimized for different compute architectures.

That’s why it was optimized to support the technologies required for inference workloads, is dense enough to allow significantly more high-value technology per rack than traditional solutions, and is suitable for a more diverse compute array of architectures than most OCP designs.

The Tundra platform:

Supports an exceptionally diverse array of technologies, including the NVIDIA T4 with Turning Tensor Cores for inference

Includes server formats from 1OU-4OU with a capacity for over 100 nodes per rack

Penguin Computing, a subsidiary of SMART Global Holdings, specializes in innovative Linux infrastructure, including Open Compute Project (OCP) and EIA-based high-performance computing (HPC) on-premise and in the cloud, AI, software-defined storage (SDS), and networking technologies, coupled with professional and managed services including sys-admin-as-a-service, storage-as-a-service, and hosting, as well as highly rated customer support.